*
The grenade wouldn’t kill James, but the paint inside was compressed at high pressure and triggered by an explosive chemical reaction that would scorch his back.
James jumped in the air, grabbed handfuls of his T-shirt and madly wriggled his shoulders to free the grenade. With less than five seconds left the grenade’s handle finally unsnagged from the collar of his shirt and it dropped to the ground, but instead of hitting the concrete floor with a thunk, it landed softly in the seat of the trousers gathered around his feet.
‘Shitting shit!’ James panicked.
He now had horrible visions of the paint exploding upwards and plastic casing shooting up and whacking him in the nuts. He stepped on the heel of one trainer and banged his knee on the dining table as he freed one foot. Once the foot was clear he put his sock down on the floor and kicked hard with his other leg, which still had his trousers and shorts bundled up around them.
This flung the grenade up high. There was a white flash as it exploded in midair two metres across the cabin. The grenade contained a highly compressed liquid that expanded into several litres of pink foam the instant it hit the atmosphere.
Doors and windows rattled with the force of the blast and James crashed into the wall as the warm, hissing foam hit him at more than fifty miles an hour. It trickled down his legs, out of his hair into his eyes as he tripped over a chair leg and felt himself tumbling through the blackness towards the floor.
His temple grazed the wall, but it wasn’t serious and he stayed down for a couple of seconds, catching his breath as the foam hissed.
James was less seriously hurt than he would have been if the grenade had exploded next to his skin, but he still faced the reality of being half naked in the dark with his hands cuffed behind his back. He stood cautiously and realised that he needed the light on if he was to have any hope of finding the handcuff key.
With only a vague idea of the furniture layout, James felt his way towards the door. He’d come in face first and been slammed down on the table, so he’d not seen the light switch. But he knew roughly where it was because Sahlin had turned the light off an instant before she’d headed outside.
He felt around with his back to the wall, but you can’t raise your hands very high when they’re cuffed behind your back so he ended up turning to face the wall and eventually felt out the light switch and turned it on using the squishy tip of his nose.
The pink dye had saturated the room, including the surface of a bare bulb mounted on the ceiling. James got his trousers up before hobbling through the pinkish-hued light and sitting on a dining chair.
He shuffled the handcuffs under his bum, straining painfully at the wrists as he squeezed his butt cheeks together and wriggled until the cuffs were around the back of his thighs. Once this was done he fed his legs through and brought his hands around to the front.
Now he just needed to find the key under the pools of foam so that he could get the cuffs off.
*
The US forces put every able-bodied man behind the defence of the command building. General Shirley and several of his most senior staff had dosed themselves up with scant supplies of anti-diarrhoea medicine and stationed half a dozen healthy guards in well defended positions around the building’s perimeter.
The insurgent mob tried getting close, but more than a dozen were expertly picked off by soldiers barricaded behind sandbags. Kazakov’s Hummer took a hit from a well-aimed paint grenade, but the man himself dived out in the nick of time.
Kazakov ducked behind the paint-spattered vehicle, surveying the building with binoculars while seven SAS men stood around waiting for his orders. These were some of the most able soldiers in the British Army yet they doted on Kazakov like pilgrims awaiting orders from their guru.
‘We aim everything at one spot,’ Kazakov decided. ‘Lots of smoke, lots of paint grenades. Find planks of wood, bed sheets, anything that will shield the paint.’
‘Maybe we could wait it out?’ an SAS man suggested. ‘No water, no electricity. They can’t do anything.’
‘No,’ Kazakov said firmly. ‘This is our time. Most of the poisoned water will have drained through the pipes when the diarrhoea broke out and the toilets were repeatedly flushed. As soon as the soldiers get clear fluid into their systems they’ll start feeling better. The balance of power could swing back in their favour in less than an hour.’
It took a few minutes for everyone to prepare for the assault. A dozen smoke grenades were already starting to fume when two of the biggest SAS men approached Lauren and Kevin.
‘Kazakov just had a bright idea,’ one of them said. ‘You two are riding piggyback.’
‘You what?’ Lauren asked.
‘It’s a single storey, we’ll rush up to the side and when we get close we fling you two up on the roof. There’s bound to be a skylight or a service hatch which you can climb through and cause some mischief.’
Lauren was knackered and would have settled for an early night, but Kevin was keen to prove his worth after being left out of the raid on the aerodrome.
The two soldiers gave it a few seconds for the smoke to build up before crouching down to let the kids sit on their shoulders. Kevin was no problem, but Lauren was a pretty chunky thirteen-year-old, especially with a rifle and a heavy equipment pack.
‘You’re a lump,’ her ride groaned, as he lifted her into the air.
The insurgents came under heavy sniper fire as more than a hundred bodies rushed the command centre. The tactics of fighting with paint were different to killing with real bullets: mattresses and wood worked as shields, but the snipers aimed at the ground or aimed shots at walls knowing that there was no distinction between a direct hit and a ricochet of chalk dust.
Even in this final battle there was little sign of cheating, probably because the soldiers would be reprimanded and the civilians would lose all their pay if they were caught out.
It had been a few years since anyone had carried Kevin on their back and he couldn’t help laughing as he was borne piggyback through the chaos. Shots cut holes through the curling smoke, but the SAS man reached the side of the command centre without being hit. Kevin grabbed the guttering before standing up on the man’s shoulders and pulling himself up on to the roof.
‘Where’s Lauren?’ he shouted.
The soldier looked around, but there was no sign either of Lauren or the soldier who’d been carrying her.
‘Looks like you’re on your own, kid.’
The smoke made it hard to see more than a couple of metres and the flat plastic roof flexed ominously under Kevin’s trainers. The building was rectangular, fifteen metres wide and thirty long. It had no windows along the sides, so the only light entered through skylights which also opened up for ventilation. Most of these were partially covered with sand and Kevin was forced to crawl over the rooftop, sweeping away the sand with his elbow before peeking down inside. The main power grid was out, but he could see emergency lighting and computer screens running off backup power inside.
Fighting spread to all sides as the insurgents closed in and the odd stray shot skimmed the rooftop as Kevin crawled cautiously. Ten metres in from the gutters, he encountered a raised aluminium dome with a ring of angled skylights around the edge.
He peered down into a large room filled with torchlight. There was a giant map of Fort Reagan on the table and desks for several dozen men, but there were only three men present. Kevin recognised General Shirley. He looked stressed, with an elbow resting on the map table and a phone in his hand.
Kevin could barely hear over the noise of battle, but General Shirley seemed to be talking to the camp commander:
‘Commander, you’ve got to understand that we have a major health crisis on our hands. Kazakov has gone beyond the parameters of decency … You know I have no wish to surrender. I don’t want that on my record, but I’ll be covered if you call a halt to this exercise on well founded health and safety grounds …’
As the general squirmed, Kevin measured the gap between two ventilation slats. It was just big enough for a paint grenade. The trouble was, the general and his staff would hear it drop and have eight or nine seconds to evacuate.
Kevin took a grenade – his last – from his backpack. He pulled the pin, released the trigger and counted eight seconds on his watch before letting it drop inside. There was a chance that the grenade would shatter the windows, so he rolled away and buried his face against the domed roof.
The explosion was instantaneous and when Kevin looked down he saw that the grenade had exploded across the tabletop less than a metre from General Shirley. The two other officers in the room had also been hit.
‘Christ,’ the general was shouting. ‘That Russian bastard!’
The general wasn’t accustomed to being blown up at his desk, so he hadn’t been wearing goggles and had foaming paint in both eyes. Excited by his success, Kevin lay on his back and launched a sequence of two-footed kicks, knocking the toughened glass out of its frame before sliding through the hole and dropping feet first on to the map table.
General Shirley didn’t think it was possible to get any more annoyed than he was already, but then his bleary eyes told him that he’d just been killed by an eleven-year-old boy.
‘He uses children too!’ Shirley shouted, sweeping away a great pile of papers from his desk and repeatedly smashing the receiver of his telephone against its base unit. ‘Is there no limit to this man’s depravity?’
‘Keep your hair on, mate,’ Kevin said chirpily as he jumped off the table. ‘Oh wait, you haven’t got any, have you …’
AFTERGLOW
The pink dye in the simulated bullets and paint grenades was designed to foam on contact with plain water. The final battle caused seventy further casualties, who all had to report to an office near the stadium and declare themselves dead, before heading off to the cleaning station next door.
Most had superficial hits on clothing with the odd splash of dye on bare skin. After being sprayed with a sweet smelling solution that counteracted the foaming effect victims were sent off to shower in individual cubicles. Any badly stained clothes were replaced with cheap cotton trousers and T-shirts before being taken away to be washed and dried. The dead would then get to spend twenty-four hours in a dormitory before being allowed to return to the exercise.
The exception to this smooth process was people with dye in their eyes, or people who’d taken direct hits from close range. The dye wasn’t toxic, but it became a mild irritant when it dried into a chalky crust, so it had to be removed thoroughly.
The procedure was undignified and James found himself standing naked, palms resting on a tiled wall, as a lanky soldier blasted him with a jet of tepid water. A rubber-suited companion worked from closer in, using a spray gun filled with the anti-foaming agent and a long-handled scrubbing brush.
‘Spread your cheeks,’ she ordered, then sent a shudder down James’ back as she squirted him with the icy chemical spray.
‘Face forwards.’
As James turned around an announcement came over the base PA system. ‘This is General Sean O’Halloran, Base Commander. As a result of successful insurgent action this exercise has now been suspended. Civilian personnel should return to their accommodation, military personnel should return to base. Please listen for further announcements. Message ends.’
James heard a few cheers from the insurgents who were queuing for the shower cubicles on the other side of a particle-board partition.
‘All done, cookie,’ the rubber-suited woman said to James, before throwing him a towel. ‘Go down to the seats and wait for a visual inspection.’
James dried off quickly then grabbed his pack and a bin liner filled with his dirty clothes. He ended up sitting in a line of plastic chairs with the towel around his waist. The only other man waiting was a chunky fellow with grey body hair.
At the far end of the room, a pair of medical orderlies had a black soldier lying under bright lights, inspecting his skin to make sure all traces of the dye had been cleaned off. They paid particular attention to cleaning out his eyes with distilled water and cotton buds.
James heard his radio crackling inside his bag and pulled it out to listen to what was going on. ‘Kazakov, you out there?’
‘Ahh,’ Kazakov answered jubilantly. ‘What’s this I hear about you abandoning us for a lady friend?’
The episode was embarrassing and James was in two minds about telling the truth.
‘She had a sting in the tail,’ James said reluctantly. ‘Army Intelligence identified me from the base surveillance video. I ended up with three female intel officers holding me down and threatening all sorts of horrible and nasty things.’
Kazakov snorted and it sounded like several cherubs were laughing in the background. ‘Suckered by a pretty lady! All that experience, all that training and you fall for a femme fatale: the oldest trick in the book.’
‘She threatened to burn me with some probe,’ James complained. ‘Totally out of order.’
‘Old General Shirley started getting desperate at the end,’ Kazakov laughed. ‘Did you catch their names? I’ll be sure to complain about their conduct in my official report.’
‘Land, Sahlin and Jones,’ James said. ‘Sahlin was the boss. So whereabouts are you now?’
‘I’m up here with the base commander, waiting for Shirley to arrive. Can’t wait till he gets here and tries to wheedle his way out of this mess.’
‘Isn’t he there?’ James asked.
‘Little Kevin got him with a grenade.’ Kazakov laughed some more. ‘He didn’t have goggles, so he’s getting cleaned up.’
Up to this point, James hadn’t made the link between the uniformed general who’d briefed them in the stadium and the flabby fellow sat in the next chair along, who was now glowering at him.
‘Gimme that,’ General Shirley shouted, practically ripping the handset from James’ hand. ‘Kazakov, you cheat, don’t think you’re getting away with this!’
‘General,’ Kazakov answered warmly. ‘I always enjoy duelling with a worthy adversary. Of course, when one isn’t around I’m almost as happy to wipe out a turd like you.’
James fought the urge to laugh out loud.
‘Six million dollars’ worth of drones!’ Shirley shouted. ‘That’s not in the playbook, Kazakov. Are you out of your mind?’
‘We sent five teenagers up there,’ Kazakov bragged. ‘A boy scout troop! You had nothing but a couple of engineers guarding your most valuable intelligence asset.’
‘And this goddamn laxative thing is degrading and depraved,’ Shirley yelled. ‘Sewage backed up, men excreting into their own helmets.’
Kazakov growled, which sounded kind of like a cat purring as it came through the radio at James’ end. ‘War is about finding your opponent’s weakest link and exploiting it. There aren’t any rules, General, there isn’t a playbook. Without clean water, an army’s dead on its feet. Didn’t they teach you that at military school?’
‘Kazakov, I’ve been involved in war games for more than thirty years and I’ve never seen this kind of back-handed sneakery.’
‘You know what your problem is, Shirley?’ Kazakov shouted back. ‘When you were at West Point Academy polishing your shiny shoes and studying books, I was in Afghanistan. Minus fifteen, ankle deep in trenches filled with frozen mud and other men’s filth, fighting against guerrillas who’d eat their own grandmothers if they thought it would give them an edge. War is mean and nasty. When you fight, you fight to win. There’s no playbook in war, General. Forget humanitarian, forget rules of engagement and demilitarised zones and food drops. That’s why you Yanks lost in Vietnam; that’s why you got your asses kicked in Iraq.’
‘We won the cold war,’ General Shirley growled. ‘We kicked your communist asses. And you talk about Afghanistan; didn’t the Russians lose that war too?’
‘The army didn’t lose it,’ Kazakov shouted. ‘Politicians lost it!’
At this point a fresh voice came over the radio. ‘General Shirley, this fighting is pointless,’ Base Commander General O’Halloran said calmly. ‘Right now we have a thousand troops, eight thousand civilians on the payroll and the world’s most expensive military training facility at a standstill. I suggest that we meet at twenty-two hundred hours in my office and discuss a strategy to restart the exercise from scratch with a revised scenario.’
‘I’ll be there,’ Shirley growled. ‘But I’m not working with that Russian. I don’t want my men exposed to his illegitimate tactics and I want him off this base.’
‘Let’s not make any hasty decisions,’ General O’Halloran said.
James smiled as he heard Kazakov shouting, ‘I’m not a Russian, I’m a bloody Ukrainian,’ in the background.
A blast of static came across the radio. General Shirley moved to hand it back to James but at the last minute he threw it hard at the wall, shattering the plastic case. He then stood up sharply and grabbed the bin liner containing his stained clothes.
The medical orderly turned anxiously towards him. ‘General, we need to ensure that your eyes are—’
‘I can see fine,’ the general growled, as he stormed around to the end of the partition and pushed his way to the front of the queue for shower cubicles.
Technically Shirley was subordinate to the orders of all permanent Fort Reagan staff for the duration of the training exercise, but nobody was inclined to mess with him. Before stepping into the first available cubicle, the red-faced general turned back and recognised several of his men in the queue behind him.
‘There’s a kid on the other side of that partition,’ Shirley said furiously. ‘Cropped hair, blue eyes, no more than sixteen years old. He’s the reason you’ve all been spending so much time on the toilet in the last few hours. Be sure to pass on your appreciation, won’t you?’
James squirmed on his damp plastic seat as powerfully built soldiers thumped on the far side of the partition and threatened a variety of things ranging from arse whippings to castration and a good old-fashioned pipe beating.
‘Dead meat,’ one of them shouted as he pounded the boards so hard that the whole wall shuddered.
James had made a few enemies in his time, but having a whole battalion of soldiers on his back was a first, and he didn’t like it one bit.
RISK
Kevin, Lauren and Rat, along with a bunch of SAS officers and some other insurgents, hung around in a reception area outside General Shirley’s command room. They sat on plastic chairs, shuffling feet, yawning and being careful not to use the water in case any trace of Phenolphthalein laxative remained in the pipes.
The air outside was heavy with the smell of disinfectant. Soldiers queued up to receive rehydration medicine and anti-diarrhoea drugs helicoptered in from a hospital in Las Vegas. The least seriously affected were already well enough to resume light duties and had begun cleaning up the camp, while a crew of engineers responsible for maintaining Fort Reagan’s facilities worked to unblock the sewage system and mop up any overflows.
Beyond the army base, the rumour Kazakov started that all civilians would be sent home with a full two weeks’ pay had led to jubilation, only to turn into bitterness and vandalism when it was quashed.
Inside the command room Mac joined Kazakov, Base Commander O’Halloran, General Shirley and several junior officers. Messengers came and went, trying to get updates from medical staff and engineers on how soon it would be before all soldiers were back to full health and base facilities were in good enough shape for a training exercise.
It was close to midnight by the time everyone agreed that a revised mission scenario would be devised and a fresh ten-day exercise would start in forty-eight hours. But Kazakov and General Shirley were at each other’s throats.
Kazakov said that Shirley was a sore loser. Shirley said that Kazakov had fought dirty and endangered the health of his men. Shirley and Base Commander O’Halloran were both one star generals, but as Base Commander O’Halloran had the final call.
O’Halloran hadn’t been impressed with Shirley’s command skills, nor with the fact that Kazakov’s unorthodox strategies had wrecked both the drones, the expensive aerodrome in which they were housed and the sewage system.
In the end his diplomatic solution was to restart the exercise from scratch. Two of Shirley’s deputies would take charge of the opposing sides, Shirley would stay on as a non-participating observer and Kazakov would be asked to leave the base.
‘Bastards,’ Kazakov shouted, waking Lauren and several others from a daze as he opened the doors of the command room with an explosive kick. At the last moment he doubled back and ripped the surveillance device stuck to the side of a computer monitor before waggling it under Shirley’s nose.
‘You see that?’ Kazakov smiled. ‘Another of your little mistakes. I heard every command. I knew every order before your own men did.’
Shirley looked battered. He knew there would be an investigation into the conduct of the exercise and the cost of damages. Even if it concluded that Kazakov’s tactics somehow breached Fort Reagan rules, the General was still going to end up looking bad after his battalion had been defeated by a much smaller and less capable force.
‘Why don’t you go back to Russia where you belong?’ Shirley hissed, before swinging a crazy punch.
At forty-nine, Kazakov was only a year younger than the general, but unlike the portly American he kept in shape and was fitter than most men half his age. He ducked beneath the swinging arm before giving Shirley a push that made him overbalance and topple forwards into a desk, snapping an LCD monitor from its base and sending a stack of papers to the floor.
Kazakov grabbed a plastic clipboard and swatted the panting general’s bald head with it, before emptying a pot filled with pens and pencils over his head.
‘Fill in your forms, General,’ Kazakov glowered. ‘Push your pens, but don’t try pretending that you’re a soldier. Real soldiers end up dead because of decisions made by buffoons like you.’
Mac and the base commander followed Kazakov out into the lobby area.
O’Halloran eyeballed Kazakov. ‘Get your things and head out to the reception point. There’s a black sedan car in bay three-sixteen. Reception has the key, tell me where you park it when you fly out and we’ll have someone to collect it from the airport.’
Kazakov looked startled. ‘Can’t I stay overnight? I’ve barely slept in two days and we’re four hours from Vegas.’
‘I want the bad blood cleared,’ O’Halloran said. ‘There’s a motel twenty miles out east.’
Mac looked at Kazakov as they began walking down a hallway towards the exit with Lauren, Kevin and Rat in tow.
‘I think you’d better take James with you,’ Mac said. ‘Word’s already out that he was the one who infiltrated the water plant and if he becomes a target I can see things escalating out of control.’
*
James woke at half-seven but the exhausted Kazakov snored on. The motel was peculiar, fitted out some time in the early eighties by someone who thought bright red plastic looked cool. The surfaces were dusty and the battery in the wall clock dead, as if they were the only people who’d stayed here in months.
James was starving and he wandered out into the morning sun. Their black Ford sedan was the only car parked outside of a room. There was desert in all directions and a two-lane highway without a car in sight.
His stomach led him to reception, which had a busted insect screen over the door and a stack of leaflets promoting visits to Area 51 and a couple of tacky local casinos.
‘Is there anywhere round here you can get something to eat?’ he asked.
The stringy old bird behind the counter looked up over half-framed glasses. ‘Got a Burger King about twelve mile east.’
‘Twelve mile,’ James said, unconsciously mocking her accent. ‘Nothing in walking distance?’
The woman looked up at him like he was stupid. ‘You see anything in walking distance? We got a vending area out back behind room sixteen.’
James found it and stuffed in quarters until he had a bottle of no-brand lemonade and a packet of Mini Oreos for his breakfast. Back in the room he took a shower and dried off on a towel so thin you could see your skin colour from the other side. He crunched his biscuits and made a bit of extra noise as he dressed, hoping that Kazakov would wake up; but the big Ukrainian was blissed out with an open mouth and a puddle of drool on his pillow.
James was impatient to get some proper food and thought about turning on the TV, but Kazakov might get annoyed if he was woken deliberately and he wasn’t the kind of man you wanted to wind up.
He felt fuller after the cookies and gassy soda, but the combo left a sickly taste in his mouth. The curtains didn’t do much to stop light coming in so he sat on his bed and re-read a couple of sections of his blackjack manual before getting out the cards and practising his card-counting skills. After half an hour he got the urge to pee, but when he looked around he saw that Kazakov had one eye open, staring right at him.
‘Hey,’ James said awkwardly. ‘How long have you been awake?’
Kazakov had done a lot of shouting over the previous two days and his voice was thinner than usual. ‘Twenty minutes, maybe.’
James smiled. ‘Just staring for no reason?’
‘There’s always a reason,’ Kazakov said, as he threw off his covers and sat up. ‘It’s interesting what people do when they don’t think they’re being watched. How’s it going?’
‘How’s what going?’
‘Counting cards,’ Kazakov said.
‘Hard to say,’ James said, ‘never having sat at a real casino table and seen how fast they deal. Or tried to keep track of cards with people moving in front of you and fruit machines bleeping. Book says it’s completely different to dealing out cards by yourself.’
Kazakov stood up naked and let off three pungent farts before gasping with relief.
‘Shit and a shower,’ Kazakov said, as James buried his face against the sleeve of his T-shirt to mask the putrid smell. ‘Then we find somewhere for breakfast.’
SPIRIT
One thing Kazakov disliked about America – along with everything else – were the roads. He said the desert scenery was boring and the car’s suspension too soft so he let James drive.
They couldn’t stop for breakfast at the first diner they reached because it was the one where the owner had pulled her shotgun on the way out. Despite being starving, James didn’t even bother asking Kazakov if they should stop at a McDonalds drive-through and by the time they reached a reasonable-looking diner they were half way to Vegas and it was past noon.
‘Maybe I should call campus,’ James suggested, as he sat facing Kazakov across a custard-yellow table top. ‘Get them to sort out our flights home and stuff.’
‘Could,’ Kazakov said, his face so full of cheeseburger and fries that he could only manage one word at a time. ‘Only … I’ve got nothing on campus scheduled until the next basic training starts in ten days. What are you so desperate to get home for?’
James shrugged. ‘I thought you hated America and everything it stood for. In fact, you said those exact words at least five times on the ride here.’
Kazakov’s eyes narrowed. ‘I want my three thousand dollars back.’
‘Right,’ James laughed. ‘You don’t wanna start gambling again, boss. No offence, but I saw what happened at the Reef the other night. You can’t hold your drink and you’re a terrible loser to boot.’
‘But this card counting,’ Kazakov said, raising one eyebrow. ‘You said it works.’
James smiled. ‘It gives you an edge, but it takes a shitload of skill. I can’t get near to a table until I’m twenty-one and even if you’ve got an aptitude for maths, it would still take me days to teach you.’
Kazakov pulled the receiver unit he’d used to bug the Fort Reagan command centre from the pocket of his tracksuit top and thumped it down on the table.
‘I know basic blackjack strategy. I wear the camera; you watch the cards and signal me when I need to bet big.’
James’ first reaction was shock. ‘You’re tripping,’ he snorted. ‘I’d need a full view of the table and I’d never be able to read the cards on that titchy screen.’
‘It plugs into my laptop screen. The camera itself is high resolution. I didn’t know what I’d need so I brought a full surveillance kit: bugs, cameras, wide angles, telephotos, triggers, relays, signal units. It’s all in the car.’
James looked around to make sure nobody was in earshot. ‘Counting cards in your head is legal,’ he said quietly. ‘But once you start using gadgets and cameras you’re cheating the casino and that’s criminal. I’ve seen the prisons in these parts and believe me, you don’t want to end up in one.’